Dexter Filkins: ‘Hard To Conclude Otherwise’ That Iraq Withdrawal Was Worst Strategic Decision
” New Yorker staff writer Dexter Filkins, an outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the Iraq War, told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that it was “hard to conclude otherwise” that the Obama administration’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq was the “worst strategic decision.” “
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In Case He Didn’t Make Himself Understood or If He Misspoke To You , The New Yorker Has Brought You This Video Record Of Exactly What The Man Said … Over And Over Again
By now we are sure that you are aware of the administration’s sorry attempts to “qualify” Obama’s statement that you could keep it … IF … and that’s a big IF , the insurance companies continued to offer your policy . The bald-face lying that this man is allowed to perpetrate on the American public completely unchallenged , nay , facilitated by , the very media that dares lay claim to the title of “watchdog” is unfathomable to us amateur “pajama-clad , basement-dwellers” of the blogosphere .
” That is not, in fact, what the president said. Not by a country mile.
What Mr. Obama actually said, dozens of times, is a variation of what he said during a speech to the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009: “That means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”
But Mr. Obama is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fabulist. It appears as if he’s in the process of becoming an inveterate one. He was, after all, building one untruth upon another. I say that because by now it’s obvious to nearly everyone, including liberals, that the president and his aides knew that when he made his initial claim that under the Affordable Care Act you will be able to keep your health-care plan “no matter what”–that you would keep it “period”–he knew the assertion was false. Yet he repeated it over and over again. “
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” Here’s a couple of data points that bear serious thought this week by transparency advocates celebrating Sunshine Week and by everybody else who cares about protecting and preserving a free and independent press:
1,130 – Number of results for search term “Koch Brothers” on The New York Times web site.
64 – Number of results for search term “The Tides Foundation” on The New York Times web site.
It’s equally certain that few reading this post know anything at all about the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation, even though its roots go deep into the radical student movement of the 1960s and it has helped fund or startup virtually every significant liberal, progressive and radical cause in the years since.
Similar results appear from the same searches on The Washington Post web site, which turns up 277 links to the Koch Brothers and 11 for Tides. And on the New Yorker web site, Koch Brothers generated 35 links and none for Tides.
The contrast was even more dramatic on the Common Cause site, where the Koch Brothers were linked 4,560 times versus one for Tides.
Similar results appear from the same searches on The Washington Post web site, which turns up 277 links to the Koch Brothers and 11 for Tides. And on the New Yorker web site, Koch Brothers generated 35 links and none for Tides.
The contrast was even more dramatic on the Common Cause site, where the Koch Brothers were linked 4,560 times versus one for Tides.
Three Koch foundations made a total of 181 grants worth$25,405,525 in 2010 (most recent available records). The one Tides Foundation made a total of 2,627 grants worth $143,529,590 in 2010.”
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” Dan Baum is not your typical gun guy. He has a lifelong love of firearms he can trace back to the age of five. But he’s also a Jewish Democrat and a former staff writer for The New Yorker and feels like a misfit next to most gun owners, who identify overwhelmingly on the conservative side of the spectrum.
In order to bridge this gap, Baum set off on a cross-country journey, chatting with everyone from a gun store owner in Louisville to a wild boar hunter in Texas to a Hollywood armorer. The result is Gun Guys: A Road Trip. I spoke with Baum about his trek through gun country and why this issue is one of our nation’s most complicated and politically divisive.
You write that you didn’t want to be part of a gun culture, even though you were a “gun guy” yourself. Why did you feel this conflict?
This is one of the things I was trying to figure out — why a fondness for firearms, these beautiful mechanical devices that are so fun to shoot, always seems to be found on the same chromosome as political conservatism. I’m not a conservative. At the same time, often I’d be around my “tribe” — the liberals — and they’d say these terrible things about gun people. “Gun nut,” “penis envy,” all this stuff. I’d keep my mouth shut. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with either group. That’s why I always wanted to do this book.
How did the act of carrying a weapon every day affect you?
There’s a part of every gun guy that wants to carry a gun because you get to be with your gun all the time. I know that sounds weird, but not if you like guns, you like handling them. Most of the time you don’t get to. You take them out of the safe once or twice a year.”
HT/Instapundit
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“Here’s a sneak preview of next week’s cover, “One on One,” by Barry Blitt. “This image seemed like a proper response to the first Presidential debate,” says Blitt, “but I’m not sure I realized how hard it is to caricature furniture.” “
” Outside the world of journalism, fact checkers were pretty much unknown until recently. Like proofreaders, they work behind the scenes. Their job is quality control. The most rigorous fact-checking operations–The New Yorker’s and Reader’s Digest’s are the best known among us who know about such things–would scrutinize every factual assertion in an article, reporting back so that any error could be corrected.
Over the past few years, many organizations have promoted “fact checkers” by making them writers, or perhaps demoted writers by making them fact checkers. No, it’s more the former, because other writers have been bowing to the “fact checkers” as submissively as Barack Obama upon meeting some anti-American dictator.”
Eric Allie’s Furious Diaper
Newsmax
YouViewed/Editorial 